t took up towards the proper supports of every really
revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen. For that
reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of
voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too
highly. The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did
not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new
politically privileged order. It is certainly not owing to the mere
imperfection of tradition, defective as it undoubtedly is, that we are
nowhere able to point to a practical influence exercised by this much-
discussed reform on the course of political affairs. An intimate
connection, we may add, subsisted between this reform, and the
already-mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities -sine
suffragio-, which were gradually merged in the community of full
burgesses. The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested
the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the
chasm between burgesses and non-burgesses was at the same time
widened and deepened.

Results of the Efforts at Reform

Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we
find that it undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to
check, and to a certain extent succeeded in checking, the spread of
decay--more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the
relaxation of the old strict and frugal habits--as well as the
preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail
to discover any higher political aim. The discontent of the multitude
and the moral indignation of the better classes found doubtless in
this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression; but we do
not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any
definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it. A certain want of
thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour,
and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little
good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by
human skill, remains fairly open to question; the Roman reformers of
this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good
statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the
old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat
inadequate and narrow-minded fashion.

Demagogism

But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the side of the
bur